Well, Texas was part of Coahuila at one time

West Texas is still “a whole other (third world) country” in some ways, but we’re not completely cut off from the real world out here. (Ok, well… George W. Bush was spawned in Midland, but … hell, we didn’t inflict him on the rest of the world.).  Whatever it was that those damn Yankees in Austin (or Washington) decided we couldn’t have — liquor, cheap meds, hookers — was always just across the border. 

Going to the border to get married?  Why, that sounds positively wholesome… it’ll ruin the image!

Midland Reporter Telegram (and AP) 

Lesbian couple from Midland goes to Coahuila to get civil union

PIEDRAS NEGRAS, Mexico (AP) – A lesbian couple from Texas became the first international visitors to take advantage of Coahuila state’s new civil union law when they registered their union on Monday in Ciudad Acuna, across the border from Del Rio.

Maria Carreon Lara, 39, and Amparo Maldonado, 24, of Midland, Texas, registered as a “civil solidarity union” under a law that went into effect in January making Coahuila the first of Mexico’s 31 states to grant recognition to such unions.

The Coahuila law allows nonresidents to register under the law as long as they are in the state legally. It is not clear if the Mexican union would have any legal standing in the United States.

The couple had been living together for five years, local media reported, and decided to register when they heard about the state’s civil union law. They did not declare joint property at the ceremony in the Civil Registry office in Ciudad Acuna.

The law is not designed to imitate a formal marriage contract, but does provide gay couples with numerous social benefits similar to those of married couples.

On Jan. 31, the first civil union in Mexico was registered in Coahuila between a lesbian couple from the northern Mexico state of Tamaulipas.

In November, Mexico City _ which as a semi-independent capital zone has some of the same powers as states _ passed a similar measure, the first in the nation’s history, but that law will not go into effect until mid-March.